WA Elections

In our documents it is unclear, it talks about a quorum required for certain business at annual meetings, but doesn't mention election of new board members, and that part is separate and doesn't state whether a quorum is required. But the board is basically saying that some of them are several years past the rules and regulations dictated three year terms. What they're clarifying when I asked is that if no quorum, it’s not possible to hold an election in any other way, and the only way a board changes with no quorum, despite term lengths, is if someone steps down. Is that true in Washington State? I mean there's no other way even if someone has been 7 years past their term unless they step down or if there's a quorum and someone runs?

Usually, board elections are held at the same time as the annual meeting. You said your documents call for a quorum to do certain business at annual meetings – reread that part again to ensure it doesn’t say anything about elections. Some documents are badly written (especially when it’s in legalese) and whoever wrote this might have included that, but it’s hard to tell.

If that part of the document doesn’t specify elections as requiring quorums, nor is it mentioned when discussing new board members (also strange), I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t do this as part of the annual meeting. Many of these meetings are done around the first part of the year (my community is having one in two weeks), and it makes sense to have a certain percentage of homeowners to participate.

You also say some of the board members are past the required three year terms, but that’s not the same as saying term limits. Were any of the current board members appointed to replace someone who stepped down? If so, that person serves until the end of the term and can either run to be elected or be voted out or step down voluntarily – whoever wins that seat starts the clock over. If there was no quorum when that time came up, the board member will serve until voted out (or recalled) or steps down.

You probably need an election AND a quorum), so the first task is go back and see who was elected or appointed when and what happened the last time there was an election. You should have some annual meeting minutes to this effect and/or board meetings noting when someone was appointed – go back seven years, if necessary, if the board members can’t remember (or are forgetting on purpose).

If it’s been several years, the homeowners are responsible for that – someone should have pushed for an election. If everyone’s been on the board for say, 7 years, it might be easier to put all of them up for election and then people can decide if they should continue or if new blood is needed. Use the quorum percentage stated in your documents for now – after the election, the board could have the association attorney take a look and see if something should be amended to make the requirements clear. Of course, that will likely require homeowner approval, so be sure to read that part of the documents so you’ll do it properly.

PS – your question was really hard to read – please use shorter paragraphs next time!

SheliaH: In summary, we never get quorum, and for example one board member has been on for over 10 years and never steps down. The question is really, is quorum really necessary to hold an election, or are there other ways (not counting people stepping down and appointments).

Quorum is needed for elections, but there are ways of getting it besides getting people to meetings. I can explain, but only if you want clarification on other ways of getting quorum.

In Washington, which is the OPs state, one can hold an absentee ballot (vote by mail / electronic form / etc) and every vote counts toward quorum. We just did that and 31% of the community voted ahead of time which meant that we had quorum prior to the meeting.

We devised an electronic voting mechanism this year and received no complaints from homeowners. When voting, homeowners had to provide two pieces of information. One is public knowledge (their name) and the other is private data (their account number). Both pieces of information were mailed to them, and everyone used the information on the mailing to fill out the ballot.

Since the account number was known only to them, we have confidence that neighbors were not voting for other neighbors, etc.

I'm not 100% sure our attorneys would agree that our method would hold up in court. All they said during Q&A sessions was that an electronic system has to authenticate that a person eligible to vote cast the vote. In my mind, our system was reasonable and made it much easier to vote than signing a document, taking a picture of it, and e-mailing to the property manager. I feel comfortable enough about our system to say that what we are doing is a reasonable decision from a volunteer board, and can say with confidence that there were no shennegians conducted during this year's election.

This is all very good info for Len, Henry.

In Ca, we have to use secret ballots so some of your methods wouldn't work here. Since you'r not ocmeltely sure if the methods you used were totally stationed Len should check with his HOA attorney.